Roger Aines is the Chief Scientist of the Energy and Homeland Security Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Aines leads the Carbon Initiative at LLNL, which aims to understand, develop, and implement technologies for the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—so-called negative emissions technologies.

Aines has been at LLNL since 1984 working on nuclear waste disposal, environmental remediation, application of stochastic methods to inversion and data fusion, management of carbon emissions including separation technology, and monitoring and verification methods for sequestration. With Amy Aines, he authored the recently released Championing Science, a book that helps scientists communicate more effectively with decision makers.

We will need to remove enormous amounts of CO2 from the air if we are to come close to our desired temperature targets. The science and engineering behind the removal methods is incredibly varied. This is an opportunity for incredible advances, and a responsibility for technologists to consider not just energy efficiency, or cost, or other technical parameters, but also to consider how cleaning up the atmosphere will affect people’s lives. Aines will address the major options for negative emissions, highlight some of the engineering challenges, and discuss the opportunities for UT engineers to change the world.